Barley
Barely is one of the two main ingredients, besides water, found in beer. Barely is a tough cereal grain grown in many different kinds of environments “from arctic latitudes and alpine altitudes to saline desert oases…generally a temperate crop, barley is also grown in many tropical countries, typically by poor farmers in hostile, dry, cool environments.”[1] It is also one of the fourth main cereal crop in world following wheat, maize, and rice. Barely first became domesticated in Near East/Fertile Crescent. Barley had a great importance in Mesopotamian city-states and in Egypt and some archeologist believe that barely was even more important than wheat in the early days of agriculture. In the present, the main countries that grow barley are Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States. In dry regions throughout the world, barely is also important because it is often the only suitable cereal that will grow under those conditions.